Review: Penultimate puts multiple notebooks on your iPad

Can taking notes with your finger ever be appealing? A new app from Cocoa Box Design, Penultimate, tries to prove that it can. Ars gave Penultimate a spin on the iPad to see whether it lives up to its claims.

<a href='http://meincmagazine.com/apple/reviews/2010/05/review-penultimate-puts-multiple-notebooks-on-your-ipad.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[mahph]

anyone else have to do a double-take when they saw the app's logo?

 

[Game_Ender]

anyone else have to do a double-take when they saw the app's logo?

That makes two of us then.

 

[Hairy Gunt]

For some reason, the first thing that came to mind was Stuff White People Like #122

 

[GrayArea]

> Penultimate has some significant flaws: it lacks colors, pen diameters, zoom, and the text is a little blurry.

Those are not flaws (well, except the blurry text if that were true, but I find Penultimate's ink rendering to be crisp and the easiest to read among a bunch of notepad apps). Some things are better when they are simple.

My list of things that could be better :

- Multiple notebooks should be shown in a grid; sideways scrolling is not practical.
- Change of orientation from portrait to landscape should be automatic; a very easy workaround is to lock orientation in portrait with the iPad switch so that the page does not get truncated as the review also notes.
- Zoom would be useful, but not necessary.

 

[vibedog]

Someone needs to come up with an ipad glove. The glove could allow resting the palm on the screen (but not registering the touch) while using a comfortable stylus. My glove would be black with a cuff and "I love Steve" in sequined letters across the back of the hand.

 

[shturmovik]

All review should do like Gaming reviews where there is a recommendation for buy/rent/dont waste your money...

 

[Galeran]

Someone needs to come up with an ipad glove.

Why not better software? They've got the multitouch patents after all. Big fat region with little movement = ignore. Small region with rapid movement = intended action.

 

[dmsilev]

What good note-taking apps would people recommend? I tried the lite edition of PaperDesk for taking notes at a long symposium this weekend, and it did pretty well, though switching between keyboard mode and sketch mode was a tad awkward (small buttons up at the top of the screen to switch modes, so going back and forth quickly is annoying).

Other things I'd like to see in a note-taking app: A dead zone around the edge of the screen so that my palm or whatever doesn't register as a blob of "ink", and for apps that have both keyboard and sketch mode, having the option for the text entry point to skip over areas where there's sketching (rather than manually hitting Enter four or five times).

dms

 

[shenlong77]

Someone needs to come up with an ipad glove.

Why not better software? They've got the multitouch patents after all. Big fat region with little movement = ignore. Small region with rapid movement = intended action.

Why not a resistive screen?
You can already do that without having to modify anything...

 

[dmccarty]

That being said, the “ink” that the pen creates looks very nice. Numerous people have raved at the way the application renders your writing and drawings.

(image of what looks like a preschooler attempting to write letters)

I must've missed the memo...since when did Ars get bought out by the Onion? Jeff are you actually serious?

 

[mono]

Needs automated sync to the cloud and/or a desktop client. Text recognition would be helpful as well. Frankly, I'd be happy if Evernote just incorporated a fingertip handwriting/drawing option.

 

[pavon]

So in summary, the iPad was designed for consuming media. Its interface (hardware and software) are very poorly suited for creating pretty much anything.

 

[Jason Honingford]

You touch the screen and it draws lines.... that was so amazing 30 years ago... does it import my old Koala Paint drawings???

 

[Fredy Eliot Cáceres Martínez]

It looks awful.

 

[Deleted member 1]

"(It should be noted that an iPad-friendly stylus would not work well with this app, as users are likely to rest their palms on the screen while writing. The iPad does not differentiate from your hand resting on the screen of the iPad and the intended input from the stylus, which could make taking notes a painful task.)"

Well I just got the Pogo Sketch Stylus and writing in Penultimate is actually very good. MUCH better than using your finger. Just don't rest your palm on the screen is all.

 

[Kalpha]

"It does, however, has many nice features that make up for some of its shortcomings"
The usage of "has" here is scraping my brain like a fingernail on a blackboard.

 

[Todd Sieling]

Penultimate looks nice, but I didn't find it really useful. The quest for an app that intermingles freehand drawing with easy text entry continues, with many out there that don't measure up.

 

[kingshaka_1977]

why dont you just wear ANY glove? pretty much most gloves are non-conducting so wont cause the iPad to register glove touches as an event. combine that with an iPad friendly pen... you've got pretty much all you need.

 

[Penforhire]

I realize the iPad may be underpowered for it but I'd like to see something more like Microsoft's OneNote. That allows quite a bit of mixed media (embedded image or web link) and 2-axis tabbed organizing of individual notebooks.

Also handwriting alone is just not that useful to me. Give us at least server-based OCR, if not local, plus a way to type directly.

 

[Todd Sieling]

I realize the iPad may be underpowered for it but I'd like to see something more like Microsoft's OneNote. That allows quite a bit of mixed media (embedded image or web link) and 2-axis tabbed organizing of individual notebooks.

Also handwriting alone is just not that useful to me. Give us at least server-based OCR, if not local, plus a way to type directly.

The iPad could totally handle what OneNote did, which strangely was the only MS product I ever liked. Adding video to documents would be sluggish on the ipad, I imagine, but I think it could handle it from what I've seen so far.

Evernote does offer server-side handwriting recognition, but I never felt really comfortable with Evernote, mostly around data export options.

 

[Cubed]

Got my iPad 3G Friday and than went to a convention all weekend. Tried using penultimate for note taking and found it to be nearly useless. The ink is far too wide, no zoom option, and lack of color ink were my biggest problems. The wide ink made my hand-writing unreadable and could fit very little on each page.

I would love a more one-note like solution. Hand writing recognition would be nice. I'm in college and currently taking a lot of math heavy classes so the ability to input math symbols is a big requirement for me

 

[name99]

"why dont you just wear ANY glove? pretty much most gloves are non-conducting so wont cause the iPad to register glove touches as an event. combine that with an iPad friendly pen... you've got pretty much all you need."

This seems unlikely to work. The iPad/iPhone screen is based on capacitance, not resistance. While gloves will reduces the capacitance of a touch to some extent (enough to make finger touches perhaps not be registered) they're unlikely to reduce the capacitance enough when we are dealing with an area the size of a palm, especially gloves thin enough to be sensible for this task.

Anyone with thin gloves handy want to try this out?

 

[neodorian]

This is why I can't wait for a tablet with an active digitizer and a capacitive touch screen. Touch is great for typing without needing a keyboard but I would really miss the main things I used my old tablet for, namely drawing/drafting, note taking, and doing things only enabled by having a pen input. The day someone makes something that has both types of input will be the day I buy a tablet again. These touch-only devices would make taking notes at meetings really annoying. I miss OneNote and a pen input.

 

[Nicky G]

Evernote for Mac, browser, iPhone and iPad rock. I can't imagine why a person would ever need anything else, note-taking-wise.

 

[desotojohn]

Penultimate - next to the last: the penultimate scene of the play.

 

[kingshaka_1977]

"why dont you just wear ANY glove? pretty much most gloves are non-conducting so wont cause the iPad to register glove touches as an event. combine that with an iPad friendly pen... you've got pretty much all you need."

This seems unlikely to work. The iPad/iPhone screen is based on capacitance, not resistance. While gloves will reduces the capacitance of a touch to some extent (enough to make finger touches perhaps not be registered) they're unlikely to reduce the capacitance enough when we are dealing with an area the size of a palm, especially gloves thin enough to be sensible for this task.

Anyone with thin gloves handy want to try this out?

i'm pretty sure resistive panels only require pressure to fire off events, thus can be caused by pressing ANYTHING, your finger, a pen, a stick! onto the screen and registering that as a click.

for capacitive screens, its all about being touched with another "conductive" surface, so it doesnt matter how large the area is touching it.. if you wear a glove that isolates you properly... it wont register as a touch on the screen.

also, i dont think this is directly related to how thin the glove is, you can buy very thin and comfortable leather gloves that will not raise a touch event on the screen.

 

[sporkme]

also, i dont think this is directly related to how thin the glove is, you can buy very thin and comfortable leather gloves that will not raise a touch event on the screen.

Just a random bit of data. I listen to stuff on my iphone while doing dishes. I wear hawt yellow dishwashing gloves (latex-y). I can still control the iphone with the gloves on.

 

[psb]

Sounds rather poor, aside from the line rendering (although in my opinion the lines are horribly thick, I know that finger input isn't the most accurate thing ever, but you could barely draw a map on the screen with that!).

Also colours - an easy addition - would help so much.

It's not that you need fifty different types of pen / pencil / airbrush / watercolour paint that accurately render as you draw, but a few colours and thicknesses can make a world of difference.

And they might as well add keyboard support.

Hope you can export the drawings too, as PDFs, SVGs, etc.

 

[kingshaka_1977]

also, i dont think this is directly related to how thin the glove is, you can buy very thin and comfortable leather gloves that will not raise a touch event on the screen.

Just a random bit of data. I listen to stuff on my iphone while doing dishes. I wear hawt yellow dishwashing gloves (latex-y). I can still control the iphone with the gloves on.

i've got some "woolen" cold weather gloves that allow me to control the iPhone just enough without having to take my hands out or to resort to using sausages i think the material used is relevant to whether this would work or not, but the thrust of my comments is that any NON-CONDUCTIVE material should be enough. i'm no expert... but maybe leather or some manufactured alternative?

 

[dmccarty]

Just a random bit of data. I listen to stuff on my iphone while doing dishes. I wear hawt yellow dishwashing gloves (latex-y). I can still control the iphone with the gloves on.

Hi. I'm an AppleCare salesman. We should talk.

 

[johnhummel]

For the gloves folks, I tried it out using my leather driving gloves.

I can write using an iPhone stylus, but it's not terribly comfortable to wear gloves and try to hold the stylus at the same time. But I could rest my palm on the screen while writing.

 

[WaggishWombat]

You've got to love technology: $500 of fragile hardware, a pair of thick non-conductive gloves and a sausage ... to be able to take basic handwritten notes.
My 120€ Palm Z22 and it's 0.1€ stylus do better than that.

Cocoa Box Design & Apple, go back to your respective drawing boards, and find something.

 

[arcite]

sausage pens are the way of the future! When you're done note taking you have a tasty snack!